Corporate Activities

Corporate event planning should not be cookie cutter material. Companies should be using these events as opportunities to reward employees and allow for socialization outside the office. Many event planners have not caught on to this strategy yet, and often turn corporate events into school-like programs. These rarely benefit anyone because they are not engaging and interactive.

Listed below are several rules that can be followed in order to plan a lasting and successful event:

Choose an event location away from corporate headquarters.

Do not incorporate rest and relaxation into the daily activities (Save for afterwards).

Create name ID badges prior to the event and make sure everyone wears theirs.

Resist the urge to play “name games,” they are typically a waste of time and nobody will remember.

Host several roundtable conversations. Do not seat more than 20 people at a table.

Have several team building exercises. For example, gather participants into groups and have them build something, analyze something, or answer a question together.

Appoint a moderator for the event who is able to call members out in the audience, or connect them in a positive way.

Hold some sort of competition amongst your attendees.

Hold discussions on short film clips or readings that relate to company goals and objectives/ trends in your industry.

Always serve good food, drinks and keep both of them coming.

Incorporate a few late-night activities.

Keep everyone busy the entire time they are there.

Consider holding some sort of tournament, like poker or cards.

Use social media to have guests “check in” with applications such as FourSquare and upload images with Facebook.

Make sure to take a lot of pictures to capture the event.

At the end of the event, participants should have made several new friends, but most importantly you want to ensure they had fun. Send out surveys to follow up to your participants and ask them what you can do better for the next event.

Contact a planner at Travel Solutions today to find out how to create a corporate event that will have lasting effects.